Monday, 9 April 2018

So the sugar tax was introduced on Friday and on social media many are starting to wake from their slumber as to what it all means.

We are already seeing smaller chocolate bars being sold for the same price, popular drinks that have been national favourite for decades being effectively discontinued, and meal deals being wrecked at the altar of 'public health' fantasy.

The public are being screwed out of their cash for no good reason, and - as Mark Littlewood writes today in The Times- it is hypocritical government which is doing the screwing.

[I]nterventions such as the sugar tax undermine the government’s narrative in other key areas. As leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband struck a chord when he campaigned on behalf of the “squeezed middle” and talked of a cost of living crisis. In the early stages of her premiership, Theresa May said she would be a champion of “just about managing” households. With real wages having been obstinately flat for years and house prices staying high, politicians of both stripes have been keen to empathise with families whose modest budgets barely allow them to purchase the essentials of life.

Consumption taxes, such as the levy on fizzy drinks, have a measurably regressive impact. They chew up a relatively high proportion of the incomes of those least able to afford them. According to the Office for National Statistics, these types of taxes account for nearly a quarter of the disposable income of the poorest 10 per cent in British society, compared with a more manageable 13 per cent for the richest decile. The next time a Tory spokesman sympathises with those who are struggling to get by, the electorate may ask why the government is gearing the tax system to make it more difficult for those on budgets to afford staple products.

If an industry conspired to ramp up prices in an entire sector as this tax does, it would be condemned as a cartel by government and be subject to scandal and heavy scrutiny. We might expect to see price caps and business owners would likely be prosecuted for fraud.

Yet the government is the one doing the price-gouging and impoverishing the poor, so apparently it's OK. It's not OK and is a national scandal that the government should presume it ever has the right to decide what we are allowed to eat and drink!

But what I find most interesting about this whole grubby affair is the huge con trick that has been played on the British public.

For example, we are told that this measure is required due to the spiralling levels of child obesity. Let's look at those from the latest HSCIC figures, shall we?

The increase - if there is one - is minimal and even that is tempered by the fact that the NHS admits the stats up to 2009 were under-estimated. There really isn't a "crisis" in child obesity.

And even if there is, it has nothing to do with sugar.

And certainly nothing to do with soft drinks consumption either considering it has remained flat for over a decade, with low sugar alternatives making up a greater proportion of that in recent years. If, like me, you are a child of the 70s and 80s, you will remember that we drank much more fizzy drinks than kids today and there were far fewer low-sugar options. We had a lot more tooth decay than kids today but we were - according to the health 'experts' - far slimmer. So how can anyone say it's the sugar causing this mythical obesity crisis? It's quite clearly not.

Yet we are told there is enough evidence about the evils of sugar in food and drink to fleece the public to the tune of £240m to £500m, depending on how trusting you are in the power of the coercive state to make predictions.

It's complete arse-biscuits.

Instead, what has happened is that the public has effectively been brainwashed into believing this fantasy, led by 'public health' cranks with an agenda to promote and a bank balance to feed with grants and advocacy salaries.

Which is why we have the bizarre situation where even articles like Littlewood's, which calmly debunks this paranoia and government over-reach, are always followed by comments from people who just can't get their head around how they have been comprehensively conned. And, to be honest, it's because many of them really want to be conned; they are eager for the poppycock they are fed to be true.

They fall into three camps, but all are based on good old-fashioned selfishness, ignorance and class hate.

Firstly, you have the look-at-me virtue-signaller. These are the ones who will boast about how they always cook food from the healthiest ingredients at home, will ban their kids from McDonald's and never have poison like fizzy drinks in the house. Oh no, they are a better class of person, not like those common oiks they see in the High Street. They are so much better than you and can't wait to jump onto radio phone-ins to explain at length how very perfect they are compared to the rest of society. They will often also requisition your kids as their own by saying action is necessary to save "our children". Ironically, these holier-than-thou types were banging on in the 90s about how they give their kids orange juice not Coca-Cola, but will never admit that now that orange juice has been demonsed too.

Secondly, we have the ones who claim their interest is because they are being unduly taxed for the sins of other people. They will scream about the cost to the health service as if this is costing them personally. The cost to the health service argument is shonky at best considering we're told the obese die earlier than those fine, upstanding healthy people thereby saving a fortune in government's biggest expenditure, pensions. But it always amuses me to think there are people around who honestly believe if everyone was slim they'd get a reduction in taxes. Of course they wouldn't. These people are actually arguing that the sugar tax is good because it will cost the NHS less (which it won't) and that might benefit them (which it won't) so are happy to see the government whack taxes on products that they may buy (which definitely will cost them). They should look up Parkinson's Law.

And lastly, we have the type who knows very well that this is a load of bollocks but just like the fact that sin taxes are regressive. They will leap on any old nonsense to justify a tax which punishes the poor, for the simple fact that they hate people who are not like them. They don't care whether the sugar tax will work, they are simply a modern version of a Victorian aristocrat who would sneer at the choices of the poor. It is now considered shameful to advocate an income tax rate for the low-paid which is higher than that for the rich, but positively encouraged by government to support disproportionately gouging the less well off for products which the rich can afford quite nicely, thank you.

It should be repellent that so many people support this assault on their fellow citizens, but politicians have been conned as much as the rest of society has. The facts show that sugar consumption has been falling consistently for decades; that sugary drinks consumption in the UK has been declining; that taxing that consumption - which makes up such a tiny proportion of our diets - will have little effect on what we buy let alone our waistlines; and it has proven to be a failure wherever it has been tried.

But we still try it because ... snobbery, as Alex Deane described at the time it was announced.

Virtue-signalling politicians, bureaucrats and celebrities feeling tremendously good about themselves because they’ve bossed the rest of us around, and imposed a stealth tax on those least able to afford it.

Still, it's only a small imposition isn't it? The government punishing the poor over fizzy drinks will be the end of the matter. Well not really, no, and if you believe that my local pub has a smoking room you can buy at a decent price.

The sugar tax is born out of the same vile and scum-infested middle class base as the smoking ban. The only difference being that back then it was smokers, now it is the overweight. The precedent was set a decade ago, a precedent which gave a green light for the most hideous in society to point fingers, criticise the choices of others, publicly vomit insults, and demand government force be brought to bear on people who they feel offended at seeing. That's all, just seeing!

The sugar tax proves that an entire population can be conned into the most grubby of sentiments purely by the repetition of lies designed to prey upon hidden prejudices. History has seen this before with disastrous consequences.